Abstract: This paper provides an overview of Aboriginal
interventions in the sport of Australian (Rules) Football in the period
since the formation of the Australian Football League (AFL) in 1990.
Recalling several pivotal events that have defined and redefined the
relationship between Aboriginal people and the Australian game of
football, this paper finds that the struggle to end on-field racial
vilification in the 1990s attracted widespread support from the
overwhelmingly non-Aboriginal public because these actions were
consistent with the political principle of equality. The key actions of
Nicky Winmar and Michael Long gained general appeal because they
demanded that Aboriginal people be treated as though they were
Anglo-Australians. In this regard, the 1990s fight against on-field
racism in the AFL was a continuation of the Aboriginal struggle for
rights associated with Australian citizenship. As the 1967 Commonwealth
referenda on Aborigijies demonstrated, most Anglo-Australians understood
and supported the political principle of equality even though the
promise of citizenship in substantive improvements to social and
economic outcomes almost 50 years later remains largely unfulfilled.

Nevertheless, in the recently concluded 2015 AFL season, Adam
Goodes, the most highly decorated Aboriginal man to play the sport at
the highest level, was effectively booed into retirement. Goodes became
a controversial and largely disliked figure in the sport when he used
the public honour of being 2014 Australian of the Year to highlight the
disadvantage and historical wrongs that continue to adversely impact
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their communities.
This paper argues that Goodes effectively sought to shift the paradigm
of Aboriginal struggle beyond the sympathetic notions of racism and
equal treatment to issues of historical fact that imply First Nations
rights associated with cultural practice. Goodes' career initiates
a new discussion about the place that Aboriginal cultures, traditions
and understandings might have in the sport today. His decision to
perform an Aboriginal war dance demonstrates that the new paradigm we
propose is primarily about the political principle of difference, not
equality.

**********

Adam Goodes' actions on and off the field have consistently
argued for the right of Aboriginal peoples to remain culturally
different and the right for these differences to be recognised and
accommodated, if not embraced, by the Australian game of football. The
cultural frontiers Goodes pressed in the elite Australian Football
League (AFL) competition reflect a growing reality in lower-level
football competitions, where Aboriginal peoples are increasingly
demanding they play the game according to what we describe as an
Aboriginal football ethic, which embodies and celebrates distinctive
Aboriginal cultural values and practices.

In this paper we argue that the ethico-political responses of Nicky
Winmar and Michael Long to racial vilification in the formative years of
the AFL inform the recent moves by Adam Goodes to assert an Aboriginal
football ethic. We show that Anglo-Australian notions of equality,
although a key construct in the Australian public's acknowledgment
of Aboriginal players' participation in the sport, severely
restrict that participation. The case of systematic public booing of
Goodes underlines the continued inability of the Anglo-Australian public
to understand the ethico-political demand of Aboriginal people for the
recognition of cultural difference.

Background and context

Since the formation of the AFL in 1990, Australian (Rules) Football
has increasingly pressed its claim to be the national game. Now played
in every Australian state and territory, the recent expansion of the AFL
has positioned the Australian game of football as the most popular and
lucrative sport in Australia today. While widespread popularity and
ubiquitous media coverage, combined with a geographic range that spans
the continent, strengthen the national claim of the sport, such claims
are intensified by its status as Australia's only Indigenous
popular sport.

Since the early twentieth century, advocates of Australian Football
have promoted its benefits according to the political agenda of
Australian nation building and the search for a uniquely Australian
national identity. In 1908 then Prime Minister Alfred Deakin (cited in
Cashman et al. 2001:111-13) argued that as a purely Australian
invention, the Australian game of football reflected more perfectly than
any imported code Australian values and ideals. According to Deakin, the
game had an important role to play in both building and strengthening
the nation. By the end of the twentieth century the sport for many
Australians had indeed become a touchstone of the Australian nation,
saying much about national cultural values and national identity. The
salient narratives of the game that emerged during this period
inextricably linked the concept of Australian nation to the racial
construct of whiteness and the cultural construct of an Anglo-Australian
culture explicitly British in origin. The national values and identity
evoked therefore came to celebrate only the archetypes of an idealised
Anglo-Australia. In other words, the foundational narratives and
mythologies that frame the Australian game of football functioned to
exclude Aboriginal people and to define them as existing both outside
the game and outside the nation despite their presence in both.

During the past two decades the expansion of the AFL into a
national competition has been accompanied by official endeavours to
broaden the popular appeal of the sport by attracting players and
spectators from non-Anglo-Australian backgrounds. To achieve this, the
AFL developed and implemented strategic initiatives to engage with both
multicultural and Aboriginal Australia. In seeking to engage with
Aboriginal Australia, the AFL brand closely aligned itself with the
politics of Aboriginal reconciliation, becoming a national advocate for
the process. In supporting this process the AFL espoused the belief that
the Australian game of football could function as an effective social
forum in which reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal
peoples might be achieved and maintained through the practice of playing
and spectating football. Overrepresentation of Aboriginal participation
as players in the AFL is often cited as substantive evidence of this
success.

Although prevailing narratives continue to be discursively
underpinned by exclusive racial notions of whiteness--and their cultural
counterpart, Britishness--in practice the sport has increasingly come to
reflect the racial and cultural diversity that is characteristic of
contemporary Australian society. The AFL has yet to resolve the inherent
tensions that exist between the prevailing narratives of Australian
Football, which locate its national credentials in the historic role the
sport played as a marker of Anglo-Australian exclusivity and uniqueness,
and the contemporary claims of Aboriginal peoples whose skilful
excellence in the sport has made the game an inherent part of their
contemporary cultures and identities throughout significant regions of
the continent.

Purpose

In this paper we find that the tension that exists between the
nationalist mythology of Australian Football and the contemporary
beliefs of Aboriginal peoples--who play, spectate and support the game
that belongs to them--remains unresolved. We believe these tensions lie
at the heart of much of the conflict that exists between Aboriginal
peoples and non-Aboriginal Anglo-Australians in the context of
Australian Football. In making these assertions we argue that Aboriginal
struggles in the Australian game have now moved beyond the contained and
clear-cut battles against on-field racism that were fought in the 1990s
to a much deeper, complex, undefined and perhaps ongoing series of
controversies that concern the cultural meaning of the sport. In other
words, we believe that recent controversies involving Aboriginal players
in the AFL are not about the issue of racism as such, but concern much
broader questions about the position Aboriginal people occupy in the
Australian game of football. Such questions are fundamentally about who
owns the game and the ways in which the game can and should be used as a
marker of racial and cultural identity and by whom.

Invariably, questions about ownership and the use of Australian
Football eventually lead to questions about who owns the country on
which the game is played. Aboriginal people who play Australian Football
believe they do so on Country and in recent times some have given public
voice to this assertion (Butcher and Judd 2015). Extending far beyond
the struggle of Aboriginal people to oppose racism in Australian
Football, this new paradigm has shifted debate to the extent to which
the Australian game of football can fruitfully be exploited by
Aboriginal peoples to transmit and replicate uniquely Aboriginal
cultural values and their own national identities.

To restate our argument in somewhat different and perhaps more
political terms, whereas previous bounded and highly targeted struggles
to end racism sought to assert the right of Aboriginal peoples to
participate in football as though they were Anglo-Australians according
to principles of civil equality, contemporary struggles seek to assert
the right of Aboriginal people to be recognised as culturally distinct
groups within the Australian game according to the principles of
political difference.

Recent Aboriginal interventions within the elite national
competition of the AFL have demonstrated the shift in the way Aboriginal
people understand Australian Football. To demonstrate this we draw on
our personal observations of the 'booing saga' that enveloped
the final playing years of recently retired Sydney Swans player Adam
Goodes. Following this story through both the mainstream sporting media
and on social media sites dedicated to Australian Football, it became
clear that the football public did not come to cast Goodes as a villain
of the game simply because of his longstanding and very public stance
against racial vilification in sports. Rather, the mass booing of Goodes
that reached fever pitch in the 2015 season was justified as socially
acceptable crowd behaviour by both the Australian Football public and
many 'respected' commentators of the game because Goodes had
dared to insert Aboriginal cultural meanings, including Aboriginal
understandings of history, into the national game. Many non-Aboriginal
Australians who believed that football should reflect their values,
identities and political agendas were not happy with Goodes'
assertion that wherever he played football, he played on Aboriginal
land; he was on the Country of a particular Aboriginal people.
Goodes' decision to respond to crowd booing by performing an
Aboriginal war dance during the opening match of the 2015 Indigenous
Round in Sydney defines his attempts to infuse Australian Football with
meaning and values drawn from Aboriginal culture and understandings of
history.

The so-called 'Goodes saga' and the controversial
reactions that characterised this episode are indicative of what might
be called the 'culture wars' within Australian Football. These
culture wars have emerged as Aboriginal people, for the first time in
the history of the sport, assert their right to infuse the game with
what we term an Aboriginal ethic of Australian Football. Such an ethic,
we propose, declares the right of Aboriginal peoples to play the
Australian game of football in ways that draw explicit inspiration from
their own stories and cultural traditions, that perpetuate and
strengthen distinctively Aboriginal identities, and, most importantly,
that maintain and reinforce connections to Country, while invigorating
and advancing the game.

Before detailing Goodes' intervention and the resulting
controversy originating in the racial and cultural fears of
non-Aboriginal Australians, it is essential to explore the historical
period that immediately preceded contemporary attempts to infuse an
Aboriginal ethic into the Australian game of football. In doing so we
retrace in some detail the foundational efforts of key Aboriginal
players to create a space in Australian Football that was free from
on-field racist attack.

The battle for equality: outlawing racism in the AFL

In 1990 the AFL was established, replacing the Victorian Football
League (VFL) as the premier Australian Football competition. During
1896-1989 only a small number of Aboriginal men played in the VFL. Some
of these men chose to play their VFL careers without reference to, or
promotion of, their racial and cultural identities as Aboriginal
men--such figures include Joe Johnson, Graham 'Polly' Farmer
and Barry Cable (Judd 2008). For others, whose Aboriginal identity was
an inescapable fact of their bodies, racism became a normalised part of
their participation in football. When a young Doug Nicholls (later to be
Sir Douglas and Governor of South Australia) turned up to train with VFL
club Carlton in the late 1920s, his potential teammates refused to share
the change rooms with him. His Aboriginality, they claimed, made his
body dirty and made it smell bad (Tatz 1995). In the 1960s, 1970s and
1980s Syd Jackson, Robert Muir, and Jim and Phil Krakouer had to contend
with constant racial vilification directed at them from opposition
players and spectators throughout their careers (Gorman 2011; Judd 2008;
Tatz 1995). Robert Muir and Jim Krakouer, in particular, often responded
physically. Their careers were severely curtailed as a result of the
on-field (in addition to the inescapable off-field) racism they
experienced. In the premier competition during the period 1896-1989 the
racial vilification of Aboriginal peoples became a socially acceptable
tactic used to put Aboriginal players 'off their game'. Racism
became entrenched in the culture of the Australian Football played at
the highest level. Judd has argued elsewhere that the sanctioned racial
vilification of Aboriginal men in the VFL reflected the values and
ideals of an Anglo-Australia that the Australian game of football sought
to reinforce in the realm of sport (Judd 2008, 2015). Lacking a critical
mass of players to challenge this situation, Aboriginal men remained
outsiders within football, a situation that mirrored the politics of
Australian citizenship for much of the same period (Chesterman and
Galligan 1997; Davidson 1997; Rowse 1998).

This situation changed during the 1990s when the AFL replaced the
VFL. The transition from a state-based to a national league witnessed an
influx of new Aboriginal players who quickly became a noticeable group
within the competition. For the first time there existed a critical mass
of Aboriginal players at the elite level of Australian Football. In this
respect the AFL differed significantly in appearance from the VFL
competition it had succeeded. Despite these changes, the cultural values
and ideals that underpinned Australian Football and the old VFL remained
unchanged. Racism directed at Aboriginal men in the sport remained a
defining characteristic of the game.

In 1993, the International Year of the World's Indigenous
People, the longstanding place of racism in Australian Football became a
controversial talking point. In a match played between St Kilda and
Collingwood football clubs at Collingwood's notoriously parochial
home ground, Victoria Park, on 17 April 1993, St Kilda's star
Aboriginal player Neil 'Nicky' Winmar decided to take a stand
against racism in Australian Football. In doing so Winmar created
history, providing a platform from which other Aboriginal players would
launch new fights in their struggle against racism in the sport. That
day St Kilda ended a 17-year losing streak at the ground. Winmar and his
Aboriginal teammate Gilbert McAdam were awarded 'best on
ground'. The combined brilliance of their play that day had been
the difference between the two teams. The Collingwood supporters were
aware of this and subjected both men to racial taunts. When the match
ended with St Kilda 22 points in front, the abuse of Winmar and McAdam
from the grandstands continued. Winmar responded by lifting his St Kilda
guernsey and, facing the hostile crowd, pointed to his chest to declare,
'I'm black and I'm proud'. The image of Winmar
making this highly symbolic gesture was captured by Wayne Ludbey and
John Feder and published in the Melbourne newspapers the Sunday Age and
Sunday Herald Sun. Those photographs produced intense debate and forced
the AFL, the Australian Football public and the nation to confront the
issue of racism that targeted Aboriginal peoples in a way rarely seen
before. For Aboriginal Australia the image of a proud and defiant Winmar
was as important as the Black Power salute of Tommie Smith and John
Carlos at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics had been for African-American
political struggle in the United States of America in the late 1960s. As
Gilbert McAdam would later recall, 'it reinforced that our people
around Australia are proud of who we are and how far we've
come' (Klugman and Osmond 2013:151). For those who supported the
twin concepts of a multicultural Australia and national reconciliation
with Aboriginal peoples, the symbolism of the Winmar image was not lost.

At the level of federal politics, Australian Labor Party Senator
Nick Bolkus, then Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, embraced
and celebrated Winmar's actions in taking a stand against racism.
Australia, noted Bolkus, was an 'unsettled nation' struggling
with widespread racism that needed to be eliminated before a 'fully
Australian identity' could be developed (Klugman and Osmond
2013:152). By declaring himself proud to be black, Nicky Winmar
'stood for the way ahead in Australia', with Australians
having a responsibility to 'tear down' racial barriers
(Klugman and Osmond 2013:152). According to Klugman and Osmond (2013),
'Winmar himself felt excited that his gesture might lead to change.
"Yes!" he exclaimed when he saw the photos, glad that finally
it seemed like "there is someone out there that is thinking like I
am thinking, just give us a chance".' The first response of
the AFL, however, was defensive. It wanted to avoid controversy rather
than focus on its failings. The AFL Commission stated that its members
'abhorred racism' but at the same time did not believe any
changes in the rules or processes were necessary. Nor did Winmar's
own employer, St Kilda Football Club, want to be 'distracted'
(Klugman and Osmond 2013:153).

The responses of the AFL and St Kilda were consistent with the
dominant cultural attitudes of Australian Football and the national
values and ideals originating in the early twentieth century that
continued to be reinforced and perpetuated in the game. Collingwood
captain Tony Shaw (cited Klugman and Osmond 2013:94) summed up those
values and ideals when he admitted:

It's a business out there ... I'd make a racist
comment every week if I thought it would help
win the game. If I think I can say something to
upset someone, then I'll say it. I couldn't give a
stuff about their race, religion or creed. If they
react, you know you've got them.

Many agreed with the sentiment of Shaw's comments. Former
Essendon champion and columnist in The Age Simon Madden agreed that
racist sledging of Aboriginal players was simply part of the
game--'The question for the footballer is not how to stop [the
abuse] but how do you handle it?' (Klugman and Osmond 2013:160).
Such sentiments found ready support from members of the public who
believed that the racial vilification of Aborigines was part of the fun
and entertainment that watching Australian Football on a Saturday
afternoon provided spectators:

Shouting out abuse was just part of footy, supporters of all clubs
did it, and the players should be able to cope with it ... As reporters
from both The Age and the Herald-Sun discovered the weekend after
Winmar's gesture, fans of all teams seemed to routinely yell out
racist abuse ... One 74-year-old woman and long-time Western Bulldogs
supporter, Mary Millard, was happy to confess, 'Of course I sing
out "black bastard", but I don't mean it. It's all
part of being at the footy on a Saturday arvo. Such supporters were in
agreement with Allan McAlister, the Collingwood president, who had
dismissed the racist abuse as just 'ballyhoo' because 'no
one is fair dinkum' (Klugman and Osmond 2013:159-60).

If most were happy to admit that the racial vilification of
Aboriginal players was acceptable because it was part of Australian
Football culture, few went as far as Allan McAlister in unmasking the
notion of Aboriginal racial and cultural inferiority that gave it an air
of acceptability. Speaking on Channel Nine's Wide World of Sports,
the Collingwood president claimed that his club had nothing against
Winmar or Aboriginal people in general, but added the following proviso:
'As long as they conduct themselves like white people, well, off
the field, everyone will admire and respect them.' When asked to
explain what he meant, McAlister made his position even clearer:
'As long as they conduct themselves like human beings, they will be
all right. That's the key' (McAlister cited in Klugman and
Osmond 2013:160-1). McAlister's remarks, intended to diffuse the
situation, confirmed the fact that racist ideology that denigrated
Aboriginal people was pervasive in the culture of the Australian game of
football. As a key cultural touchstone of Anglo-Australia, it was hardly
surprising that the AFL did nothing to end the type of racial attacks on
Aboriginal players that had prompted Winmar to point out in public his
personal pride in being an Aboriginal man.

The issue of racial vilification did not end with Winmar. Just two
years later during the 1995 Anzac Day match between Essendon and
Collingwood the issue had again become a national headline. This time
Michael Long, the champion Essendon player, was racially vilified by
Collingwood ruckman Damian Monkhorst. The incident occurred late in the
match when Long tackled Monkhorst and forced a stoppage:

As the umpire blew the whistle for a ball up Monkhorst turned to
Long and said, 'Will someone get this black cunt off me.'
Incensed, Long turned to the umpire who apologized, explaining that he
could do nothing because there was no law against racial vilification.
It was the moment that Long decided to make a stand against this type of
discrimination. The incident with Monkhorst was not the first time Long
had experienced vilification either on or off the football field.
Instead, it was the confluence of many incidents he had had to deal with
... (Gorman 2011:148)

The actions of Winmar in exposing the ugly racism that pervaded
Australian Football and starting a national conversation about the place
racism had in sport and society provided Michael Long with a platform
from which to push the AFL further on the matter. As sports journalist
Martin Flanagan (2015:48) has noted, 'Nicky Winmar pointing to his
skin at Collingwood in 1993 provided the issue of racial abuse with an
iconic image but it was Michael Long, in 1995, who forced the political
change'.

The change that Long was able to force took the struggle against
racial vilification in sport down a legal avenue. Long had the support
of his club, including the much-respected Essendon Football Club coach,
Kevin Sheedy, and the club's president, David Shaw. On 1 May that
year, Essendon Football Club lodged a formal complaint with the AFL
seeking redress over the incident. In response the AFL established a
mediation process that would bring Long and Monkhorst face to face to
settle the issue. Long wanted a personal apology from the Collingwood
player. Monkhorst refused; instead, he told Long, 'You took it the
wrong way mate' (Monkhorst cited in Klugman and Osmond 2013:185).

In its haste to declare the matter resolved, the AFL called a press
conference for 5 May to bring the matter to a speedy conclusion. Despite
the lack of an apology, AFL Chairman Ross Oakley announced that the
matter had been successfully resolved. Long had been silenced as part of
the mediation 'settlement' but the AFL had failed to impose
any penalty on Monkhorst. Racism that targeted Aboriginal players
remained permissible, or so it seemed. Long, however, had other ideas.
Not happy with the outcome of the initial mediation, Long worked hard in
pushing for the matter of racial vilification to finally be taken
seriously by the AFL. Critically, Long was supported by his club
president, coach and a number of high-profile non-Indigenous teammates,
including James Hird. On 9 May the AFL's response was to direct its
communications manager, Tony Peek, to consult with Indigenous players in
the league. Peek reported that racial vilification of Aboriginal players
was widespread, experienced on a regular basis and perpetrated by a
number of serial offenders. As a result of the determination of Michael
Long to see change, on 30 June 1995 the AFL implemented 'Rule 30: a
rule to combat racial and religious vilification'. Rule 30
represented a seismic shift in Australian sports. For the first time in
history the governing body of a professional sport in Australia had
prohibited competitors from racially abusing opponents (Gorman and
Reeves 2012:14-22). Importantly:

implementation of Rule 30 charged umpires with 'reporting
instances of abuse', taking the burden away from Indigenous (and
other) players to report it themselves. The new rule set in place a
process of confidential mediation for disputes in the first instance,
overseen by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. If
mediation failed the complaint could proceed to the AFL Tribunal. But
despite the agitation of Long and others, players would not be fined.
Instead, clubs would be liable for up to $50,000 in penalties if the
complaint was proven at the tribunal ... Aboriginal players welcomed the
initiative despite the removal of fines. Long said 'It's great
that the AFL has done something about it ... I'm very happy
something has been done about it. It's been a long time
coming'. (Klugman and Osmond 2013:192-3)

The change was significant. Martin Flanagan (2015) considers
Long's intervention as the 'Mandela moment' in Australian
Football. Flanagan argues that Long was able to facilitate change
because he brought the Australian public with him in his crusade against
on-field racism.

The era of Winmar and Long occurred at a time of transition as the
old parochialism of the state-based VFL gave way to the
continent-spanning aspirations of the AFL, which aggressively sought to
position itself as the national game. The interventions of Winmar and
Long were about the specific issue of racial vilification of Aboriginal
people in the context of Australian Football, and their stand against
racism focused on very particular and bounded incidents of racism. Nicky
Winmar's iconic gesture lives on as a symbol of the turning point
in public acknowledgment of this entrenched problem in football, while
the quasi-legal actions pursued by Long led to the prohibition of
on-field racism through the rules of the game.

Due to their targeted actions and powerful argument for a very
specific institutionally sanctioned outcome, the ending of racial
vilification in Australian Football, both individuals gained widespread
support from the non-Aboriginal Australian public. Flanagan (2015) has
asserted that the persona of Michael Long was such that he succeeded in
bringing the Anglo-Australian mainstream with him. Both Winmar and Long
spoke with efficiency where the media was concerned. They tackled racism
with a quiet and resolute defiance, steadfast in their belief that it
was they who held the moral high ground. Fundamentally, we believe, both
men seemed content to let the Australian media and public consider the
issues they raised without seeking to impose themselves at the centre of
this national debate. In this, the approach both men brought to the
politics of race has been characterised as drawing on distinctly
Aboriginal traditions (Beckett 2014; McCoy 2008; Musharbash 2008; Rowse
2000). The dignified defiance of both Winmar and Long found ready
comparison in the old and revered men of the Aboriginal rights movement,
like Sir Douglas Nicholls, who dedicated his life after Australian
Football to achieving Australian citizenship for Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander peoples and was rewarded by Anglo-Australia with a
knighthood, an Order of the British Empire and the governorship of the
State of South Australia (Broome 2015; Clark 1965; Tatz 1995). It was an
approach that the overwhelmingly non-Aboriginal sporting public found
conciliatory, non-threatening and, therefore, politically palatable.

While it may be true that the public personas of Winmar and Long as
'likeable men' may have enabled the Australian public to more
easily follow and support their leadership, we believe that the
Australian public came along with Winmar and Long because their struggle
against on-field racial vilification was fundamentally about equality
and the right to be treated as if they were Anglo-Australians. In this
respect, the actions of Winmar and Long can be seen as contiguous with
the struggle for Aboriginal citizenship, and thus extend that history,
which stretches back to the 1860s and arguable further (Attwood and
Markus 1999, 2004; Arnold and Attwood 1992; Chesterman and Galligan
1997; Davidson 1997). The overwhelmingly white Australian public came to
sympathise with Winmar and ultimately to back Long against the AFL, a
nationally recognised institution and cultural icon of Anglo-Australia,
because the racial vilification of Aborigines in the Australian game of
football had by the 1990s become a glaring inconsistency with their
formal legal status as Australian citizens and was out of touch with the
core Anglo-Australian mythologies of equality and a fair go for all. In
the period since those pivotal events, Rule 30 of the AFL code has
become a non-negotiable part of the game because it seeks to ensure all
who play the game are treated as equals.

Freed from the curse of on-field racism, Aboriginal players began
to prosper like never before. Throughout the 2000s, the number of
players from declared Aboriginal backgrounds has consistently hovered
between 9 per cent and 11 per cent of all playing personnel at the elite
level in the league (AFL Community n.d.; Gorman 2011; Hallinan and Judd
2009; Judd 2010). This is a significant achievement given that
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples constitute just over 2 per
cent of the Australian population and no other Australian institution
can boast comparable numbers of Aboriginal people in its employ. The
over-representation of Aboriginal players was a direct outcome of the
battles of Winmar and Long in the 1990s. Their actions and the
conversation about race and culture they opened up contributed to
greater AFL engagement with Aboriginal communities across Australia.

Based on the new culture of inclusiveness in the Australian game of
football that actively encouraged and embraced Aboriginal participation,
the AFL introduced an annual reconciliation round to celebrate the role
that Aboriginal people have played in the sport's history. The
showcase match dubbed 'Dreamtime at the G' ('G'
being shorthand for MCG, the Melbourne Cricket Ground) is now
established as one of the more popular and most anticipated of the
regular home and away season. In addition, the AFL has sought to
actively encourage an ongoing relationship with Aboriginal Australia,
establishing targeted community engagement programs to support the
development of Aboriginal talent. At the elite level, the AFL, the AFL
Players Association and clubs established dedicated positions to foster
relationships and provide improved support for Aboriginal players and
their families. More controversially, the AFL also sponsored historical
investigation of the possibility that the Australian game of football,
first codified as the Melbourne Rules in 1858, may have Aboriginal
influences derived from the Kulin (most notably, Djabwurrung and
Woiwurrung) game of marn-grook (in English, ball-foot). Tacit support of
this historical theory has been forthcoming in the form of an
AFL-sponsored monument at Moyston, Victoria, that celebrates the
'Aboriginal connection'. An annual match between Sydney and
Essendon, played for the Marn Grook Trophy, has also received official
sanction (Hallinan and Judd 2012; Judd 2012).

As a result of these initiatives, the AFL became widely known as a
leading institutional supporter of national reconciliation. In
Aboriginal Australia, the AFL became a preferred career destination
where Aboriginal men might achieve their ambitions as elite professional
athletes. Nevertheless, although the introduction of Rule 30 created an
environment in which Aboriginal players were welcomed as individuals,
the battles of Winmar and Long in the 1990s did nothing to make the
Australian game of football inclusive of Aboriginal culture and
traditions or the different understandings of the sport these cultural
differences were likely to embody (Gorman and Reeves 2012a; Reeves et
al. 2016). It was in this context that the career of Aboriginal player
Adam Goodes was played out.

Beyond racial vilification: Adam Goodes as cultural warrior

According to his playing record, Adam Goodes is the most highly
decorated Aboriginal man to have played Australian Football at the
highest level. Goodes is a dual winner of the Brownlow Medal (2003,
2006), dual premiership player (2005, 2012), four-time All-Australian
team member (2003, 2006, 2009, 2011), three-time winner of the Bob
Skilton Medal (2003, 2006, 2011), three-time leading goal kicker for the
Sydney Swans (2009, 2010, 2011), winner of the AFL Rising Star award
(1999) and member of the AFL Indigenous Team of the Century (Gorman
2011). Goodes also holds the record for most games played for his club
(South Melbourne/Sydney Swans, 372 games) and was honoured for his
community development work with Aboriginal youth as recipient of the
Australian of the Year Award (2014). Given these outstanding
achievements, Goodes should be celebrated as an AFL hero in the same way
as Barassi, Coleman, Jesaulenko, Matthews and many others have been; but
this is not the case. Instead, Goodes' time as an elite football
player is now commonly remembered for the 'controversies' that
came to characterise the twilight of his playing career.

It is normal that AFL seasons past are recalled in history
according to the premiership-winning team. In 2015 the premiers,
Hawthorn, completed the rare feat of winning three grand finals in a
row. History, however, will remember the 2015 AFL season as the year the
overwhelmingly non-Aboriginal public effectively booed a champion
player, Adam Goodes, into retirement. Throughout the season, Goodes
became the target of persistent crowd booing on every occasion he
represented his club, the Sydney Swans. Goodes had been booed in
previous seasons because he possessed the ability to change the course
of a match, more often than not winning it for his team. This, however,
was different. Across the 2015 season, Goodes was simply booed for being
Adam Goodes.

Opposition crowds booed Goodes at all grounds he played at, but
were particularly unsporting and vehement in Perth. After a match
against the West Coast Eagles at Subiaco Oval, on 26 July, Goodes was
forced to take leave from the game. Commenting on the behaviour of the
Subiaco crowd, highly respected ABC sports commentator Gerard Whateley
described the booing of Goodes as a disgrace:

Make no mistake, this is one of the most shameful episodes in the
game's history, the way Goodes is being booed at the moment...

At its heart here there is a racist element. Not everyone booing is
a racist but you are covering up the racist element.

If you are not booing for racist grounds, stop, because it never
used to be part of your day at the footy.

Stop, and let the racists boo and then call them out, because this
is disgusting ...

Adam Goodes has never been booed in such a manner at Subiaco
before--keep in mind that the Swans and West Coast have the great
rivalry in the competition when Goodes was a central figure to it ...
(ABC News 2015)

In direct response to the Subiaco crowd, 150 Australian
institutions published a joint press release in which they called for
renewed efforts to stamp out racism in sport and everyday life, stating,
'Australia must and can be better than this' (Australian Human
Rights Commission 2015). Aboriginal Senator for the Northern Territory
and former Olympic gold medallist Nova Peris said Adam Goodes was booed
because 'he speaks out for Indigenous people...He's spoken out
and it's made people feel uncomfortable' (Schubert 2015).
Whateley agreed: 'people are pretending it is because he slides or
he plays for a free kick. The truth is it is because he has called out
racism' (ABC News 2015).

When Goodes himself revealed to the media that he felt the booing
was motivated by racism, the AFL, as well as most leading football
journalists, called for crowds to stop. The booing, however, persisted
and Goodes was effectively forced into early retirement. Shortly after
he announced the end of a brilliant career, following the Sydney
Swans' semi-final loss to North Melbourne, he rejected the
invitation of the AFL to participate in a lap of honour at the 2015
Grand Final, as is the norm for retiring players. Goodes, instead,
promptly left Australia for an extended overseas holiday.

The controversial circumstances that plagued Adam Goodes'
season in 2015 exposed the endemic problem of the game's
association with ideological notions of Anglo-Australian dominance.
Australian Football is a contemporary popular sport in a multicultural
country that had in recent decades prided itself on its stance in
systematically outlawing on-field racism and engaging in a high-profiled
advocacy of national reconciliation with Australia's Indigenous
peoples. Despite the pleas of journalists, sports commentators,
politicians and public figures to cease what many regarded as a shameful
practice, coupled with Goodes' own public statement that he had
become the target of a racially motivated public attack, the booing
continued for the duration of the season.

Those who continued to boo strenuously argued that race and racism
had nothing to do with why the overwhelmingly non-Aboriginal Australian
public had come to target Goodes in this way. Comments to online forums
moderated by the Melbourne Herald Sun newspaper are representative of
how the public justified the booing while at the same time rejecting the
practice as racially motivated. Most said the 'problem' was
Adam Goodes the individual. 'Tiger' for example, said:

Why doesn't the media give some real attention to other
football players that go out there week after week and play as part of a
team? I'm getting so sick and tired of these solo star attention
seeking sooks who think the game revolves around them and only them. (28
July 2015, in Herald Sun 2015a)

'Paul' (28 July 2015, in Herald Sun 2015a) found the
accusations of racism difficult to understand:

Please answer this. If everyone is so racist
at the footy: why don't they boo the other
71 indigenous players in the AFL.

In a similar argument, 'Andrew' reiterated that the
'problem' lay in Goodes' personal inability to cope with
crowd reactions:

I booed Adam Goodes because he or members of the media made an
issue out of it. And now we are told it is affecting him I will boo him
even more. That is part of football. We boo or scream out sledges in the
hope of putting a player off their game. Most players don't get
booed constantly because it doesn't seem to have an effect. After a
few rounds it stops. If a player being booed complained about it or did
some sort of gesture on the ground to show their frustration I would
then boo them even more. The media attention on it this week will make
people boo him even more. As for Adam Goodes' legacy. Is that to be
known as a whinge(r) [sic] because people dared boo him? Had he ignored
it it would have blown over by now. But instead Adam and other players
comment on it and so it becomes bigger. If players during a game are
noticing or commenting on it then it has an effect because that means
they are not 100% focused on their game. And that is the whole point.
(29 July 2015, in Herald Sun 2015b)

'Elizabeth', too, thought the 'problem' was
Adam Goodes, denying the booing had anything to do with race:

The media desperately wants this booing to be about race, which it
really isn't. Goodes could be white, black, blue, green or
polka-dotted, and this booing would still be happening. It's just
him! He's one of the AFL's darlings, playing for the
AFL's pet team, and the way he prances around and begs for free
kicks, while whacking players and never being sanctioned ... He's
just another kind of villain, which footy has always had. Then we have
the incident with the kid in the crowd, for which Goodes is named
Australian of the Year. Spare me! The A. Goodes Show is just
nauseating--and it goes on and on! (29 July 2015, in Herald Sun 2015b)

West Coast supporter 'Susan' said, T don't boo and I
don't believe in it, but this booing is NOT a racial issue';
she went on to explain that:

It is entirely directed at Goodes's on and off field
behaviour. He gets frustrated and lashes out like he did to Schofield
and Yeo, and I for one, have never forgiven him for disrespecting the
Australian of the Year Award. If he didn't respect it don't
accept it and he needed to take himself out of the running before the
award was announced. Karl Langdon said he was booed every time he got
the ball. Was it racist? Ben Cousins was booed by opposition supporters.
Was this racist? And the list goes on. Come on media IT IS NOT A RACIAL
ISSUE!!!. (28 July 2015, in Herald Sun 2015b)

'Lynda' perhaps summed up better than most why the public
had come to boo Adam Goodes:

There have been various incidents involving Goodes that have
accumulated over time, both on and off the field. However, the two that
probably brought the whole issue to a head were these. When Goodes was
appointed Australian of the Year he claimed that as a licence to direct
his bitterness regarding our history, at the non indigenous [sic] people
of Australia, citing all as racist. Australians are pretty laid back and
accommodating people, but when push comes to shove they will not
tolerate being accused of something they are not guilty of. Goodes had
the opportunity to use his appointment [as Australian of the Year] to
build a bridge and unite, instead he lacked maturity and allowed
bitterness to dictate his stance and he, himself, took the mantle of
racism. The incident on field, calling out the young girl [an incident
of racial vilification directed at Goodes from the crowd at a 2013 AFL
fixture, which we discuss later] for making a comment he deemed
offensive and in doing so, exposed that child not only to the people in
the stadium but the whole nation on tv. [sic] coverage. I believe a lot
of people thought his reaction in that matter completely over the top
and exaggerated. Those incidents, I believe, promoted Goodes as being
self obsessed and concerned with his own importance. There is no denying
Goodes has made massive contributions in his football career. However,
latterly with the simulated spear throwing incident which was blatantly
an 'up yours' toward the Carlton fans which Goodes decided to
claim under his indigenous heritage cloak. The public are pretty astute
and were not convinced of the validity of the gesture. It is sad, given
Goodes is coming to the end of his football career that he has attracted
such disrespect from some of the public. However, now Goodes want(s) the
slate wiped clean so he can finish on a high. It is a pity that Goodes
did not have the maturity to temper his comments, see the bigger picture
and put himself above the racist calls and set himself as the indigenous
statesman he could and should have been. With hindsight, there could
have been a totally different ending, but Goodes chose his path and has
made his own history. (28 July 2015, in Herald Sun 2015b)

The comments outlined above are both indicative of the public
critique of Goodes and of the consistent attempt to disavow any racist
underpinnings to the widespread booing. Despite this, most comments
posted to the HeraldSun, Facebook and other online forums and social
media sites dedicated to Australian Football invariably (but
inadvertently) almost always drew attention to the racial dimensions of
the dislike the public had come to have of Adam Goodes. Goodes'
racial identity as an Aboriginal man was not 'the problem';
rather, the problem was the way Goodes had begun to conduct himself in
the public domain. Goodes, it seemed, spoke and acted in ways that were
considered inappropriate to large sections of the overwhelmingly
non-Aboriginal public. The offence that Goodes caused seemingly hinged
on three decisive events that public commentary, including the comments
above, repeatedly cited as 'evidence' that his actions and
attitudes both on and off the field had increasingly become
unacceptable, offensive, provocative and, worst of all,
'un-Australian'.

On-field it was Goodes' strong actions against racism that
placed him off-side with the public. In 2013 during the opening match of
the annual AFL Indigenous Round, Goodes was racially vilified by a
13-year-old girl in the crowd. Leaning over the boundary fence, the girl
called Goodes an 'ape'. Goodes heard this and took offence. He
immediately requested that the security team eject the teen from the
ground, which was in line with the Melbourne Cricket Ground's
policy of ejecting individuals reported for anti-social behaviour. The
following day Goodes spoke to the media and referred to the 13 year old
as the face of racism (Windley 2013). The public came to interpret
Goodes' response to the teen as an overreaction, not understanding
why he took offence at being described as an 'ape'. Many also
viewed his response to the girl as heavy-handed and some considered it
an act of bullying. This was typified by on-air comments by the highly
influential Collingwood Football Club president and popular media
personality Eddie McGuire; on his Triple M radio show he suggested
Goodes might promote the release of the stage play King Kong. McGuire
made a public apology later that day. Problematically, it was described
by the then AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou and the media as merely
a 'gaff', attributed by McGuire to tiredness (ABC News 2013).

During the corresponding match two years later, as described above,
Goodes responded to the widespread booing that had by now become a
defining feature of his playing career by performing an Aboriginal war
dance. As the dance concluded, Goodes threw an imaginary spear into a
section of the crowd occupied by opposition supporters. The public
reacted to Goodes' display of Aboriginal culture as a provocative
act that was openly hostile to non-Aboriginal Australia. Goodes'
war dance caused a national furore as the issue came to dominate debate
on the sporting pages of the national press and social media. Few
commentators, professional or amateur, believed that there was a place
for such displays of Aboriginal culture and identity in Australian
Football, not even during the AFL Indigenous Round. Contrasts were made
between Goodes' war dance and the New Zealand rugby team's
Haka, which is ceremonially performed prior to each match they play.
Typically, opinion was that while the Fiaka is scheduled into a
fixture's organisation, Goodes' war dance was spontaneous and
unanticipated. Again, McGuire felt the need to proffer his opinion,
stating that the crowd 'should have been warned' (Hogan 2015).
Interestingly, the AFL Commission hesitated in responding to the events
that were unfolding. Its chairman (and Rhodes Scholar), Mike
Fitzpatrick, and its chief executive, Gillon McLachlan, were seemingly
unable to exercise decisive leadership, neither supporting Goodes nor
the baying crowds. McLachlan issued an official statement, following an
emergency meeting of the commission that took place several days after
the events at the Subiaco ground:

Racism has no place in our game, and while I respect that people
may have different views about what is happening to Adam, it is
impossible to separate this issue from the issue of race. The booing of
Adam Goodes is being felt as racism--by him and by many in our football
community and, as such, I urge our supporters to understand the toll
this is having, the message it is sending, and that it does not reflect
well on our game. (Le Grand 2015)

In this statement and others, the AFL Commission did not and
subsequently has not explicitly attributed the booing to racism.
However, the Sydney Swans came out in support of Goodes. The Swans
chairman, Andrew Pridham, in his opening address prior to the following
fixture stated, 'Adam Goodes has been booed relentlessly because he
is an Aboriginal and because he has had the courage to stand and speak
about matters close to his heart' (Le Grand 2015).

Off the field, we argue, it was Goodes' advocacy on behalf of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples that put him offside with
the Australian Football public. As the 2014 Australian of the Year,
Goodes became a high-profile advocate for Indigenous Australia. He
called on all to respect Indigenous peoples' history and ongoing
cultural difference. He said all needed to recognise the past and
present contributions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
that make Australia a better place to live. Goodes reminded the
Australian public that we need to do more to 'close the gap',
pointing to the abysmal health, education, employment and life
expectancy outcomes that continue to be experienced by Indigenous
peoples. Goodes, however, caused offence when he used his Australia Day
acceptance speech to remind the nation that Indigenous Australians,
including himself, continue to experience the negative effects of racism
every day of their lives. He reminded Australia of the challenge it
faces to overcome racism:

Growing up as an Indigenous Australian I have experienced my fair
share of racism. While it has been difficult a lot of the time, it has
also taught me a lot and also shaped my values and what I believe in
today. I believe racism is a community issue which we all need to
address and that's why racism stops with me ... I believe we are
all connected whether we like it or not. We are all equal and the same
in so many ways. My hope is that we as a nation can break down the silos
between races, break down those stereotypes of minority populations,
indigenous populations and all other minority groups. I hope we can be
proud of our heritage regardless of the colour of our skin and be proud
to be Australian.

I'm not here to tell you what to think, or how to act to raise
your children. All I'm here to do is tell you about my experiences
and hope you choose to be aware of your actions and interactions so that
together we can eliminate racism. I'm so grateful for this award
and this honour, however the real reward is when everyone is talking to
their mates, to their families and their children, having those
conversations and educating others about racism. What it looks like, how
hurtful and how pointless it is and how we can eliminate it. The
ultimate reward is when all Australians see each other as equals and
treat each other as equals. To me, everything is about people and the
choices we make. I believe it's the people and the interactions
between us that makes this country so special. Thank you so much and
have a great Australia Day. (Australian of the Year Awards 2014)

This speech became a focal point for public dislike of the way
Goodes behaved in public off the field. Few had actually read it and
instead of being seen as a call for national unity in the fight for
racial equality, it became often misquoted as a call for Aboriginal
separatism and an open attack on the inherent racism within
non-Aboriginal Australia (see Sharwood 2015, Bolt 2013, Herald Sun
2015c).

According to those public commentaries, Goodes' advocacy of
Indigenous rights and willingness to revisit the link between the racism
he and other Indigenous people experience on a daily basis and the
unsolved historical issues of colonisation and dispossession brought the
position of Australian of the Year into disrepute. The problem many had
with Goodes was that he admitted when receiving the honour that:

He says he finds it hard to buy into a celebratory notion of
Australia Day 'because of the sadness and mourning and the sorrow
of our people and a culture that unfortunately has been lost to me
through generations'.

Goodes grew up believing Australia was founded on a summer's
day in January 1788 when Governor Arthur Phillip staked the flag of the
British kingdom in the sand of Sydney Cove.

'I've obviously learnt different since then,' he
says.

Nevertheless, he finds cause for optimism.

'We are still here, we've got a lot to celebrate about
being here and that we have one of the longest-serving cultures still
alive and kicking.' (Wood and Elliott 2014)

Goodes' use of the position for this purpose was deemed by
some to be highly inappropriate and many believed that he had acted in
an exemplary 'un-Australian' way--a perspective that was made
absolutely clear when former A-League goalkeeper and media worker
Griffin McMaster tweeted, 'Adam Goodes calls Australia Day invasion
day ... Deport him ... If you don't like it leave.' When later
challenged on this, McMaster responded, 'Disrespect this country
and you cop it. I'm not happy with the way he's going about
things' (cited in Mannix 2015).

In attempting to make sense of the negative public reaction to
Goodes, we assert that Goodes has become characterised as a problematic
and divisive figure in the Australian game of football because he has
consistently and influentially insisted that Aboriginal cultures have a
place in the national game. The 'controversies' that the
public repeatedly cited as 'evidence' of his
'unacceptable' on and off field behaviours may each be read as
the failure of non-Aboriginal Anglo-Australia to accept Goodes'
assertion of Aboriginal cultural belonging that has its basis in the
historical fact of Aboriginal cultures, traditions and ties to Country
that pre-date the contemporary Australian nation-state by countless
millennia. In making these assertions Goodes made himself unpopular with
the overwhelmingly non-Aboriginal Australian public. We believe that
Goodes' actions on and off the field have increasingly been
informed by a growing personal awareness of his Aboriginal identity and
the historical facts that have impacted his own immediate and extended
family networks, as evidenced in his participation in the SBS television
documentary Who do you think you are? (2014), where he can be seen
learning firsthand for the first time who his ancestors are, where they
are from, and what their history is. Throughout the documentary, we see
Goodes' embodiment of Aboriginality grow and his desire to learn
cultural practices flourish. Goodes has, in our opinion, come to the
view that as First Nations peoples whose historic presence pre-dates
that of non-Aboriginal Australia, both he (as an Aboriginal man) and the
cultural traditions (that are coming to inform his own identity
position) claim not only a valid place within the Australian game of
football but a priority over non-Aboriginal Australia. Stated somewhat
differently, Goodes has increasingly become mindful of the fact that
wherever he played AFL football he did so on the Country of an
Aboriginal nation, and that whether through the ancient history of
marn-grook or the recent history of Indigenous over-representation, he
also came to consider the Australian game of football to be a central
part of contemporary Aboriginal culture and identity.

When Goodes called the 13-year-old girl a racist it was she who was
forced to leave the MCG. Goodes, a welcome visitor to the Country of the
Wurundjeri people, remained on the field, a space where tradition says
men of the Kulin Confederation met to play marn-grook (Hallinan and Judd
2012; Judd 2008, 2012). When Goodes decided to perform an Aboriginal war
dance during the Indigenous Round, he did so secure in the knowledge
that the Sydney Cricket Ground stood on the Country of the Cadigal
people, a people who had always been prepared to dance with strangers as
an important symbol of welcome and mutual respect. When Goodes accepted
the honour of being Australian of the Year, pointing out (though not in
his acceptance speech) that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
did not find much to celebrate on a day that commemorates the foreign
occupation of their homelands, he did so in a way that reconfirmed
Aboriginal connections to Country and their First Nations right to
persist as distinctive cultures within an overwhelmingly non-Aboriginal
contemporary Australia. In each case, Goodes' actions indicate his
belief that Aboriginal culture belongs in Australia and occupies an
unquestionable position within the Australian game of football. In our
view the booing of Goodes and the incapacity of the AFL to respond
effectively signified the immaturity and fragility of non-Aboriginal
Australia and its inability to come to terms with the facts of its own
history, as well as the unwillingness of many within the Australian game
of football to acknowledge, accept or even countenance the possibility
that an Aboriginal football ethic exists and has taken root in the AFL.

Public reaction to Goodes appears difficult to explain, given the
fact that his statements of historical fact and demonstrations of
cultural pride both on and off the field have, in our view, never been
forcefully argued and have long been expressed in the public domain.
Indeed, in the context of Aboriginal society, Goodes is a political
conservative as indicated by his public advocacy of the Australian
Government-sponsored Recognise campaign (RECOGNISE News 2014). Yet in
broader society, Goodes' assertion of Aboriginal cultural belonging
in Australian Football has been regarded as radical and controversial
and has been condemned as unacceptable, provocative and un-Australian by
the overwhelmingly non-Aboriginal public.

Goodes' views on football and the place of Aboriginal peoples
and cultures within it were articulated long before the booing
controversy. In 2008 he outlined his position in The Australian game of
football since 1858, a publication sponsored by the AFL to celebrate 150
years of the sport: in an essay titled 'The Indigenous game: a
matter of choice' (Goodes 2008), which was framed as a personal and
subjective engagement with the history of the sport, Goodes considers
the Djabwurrung and Woiwurrung cultural practice of marn-grook and its
possible role as a forerunner of the contemporary sport that was first
codified in 1858. In concluding, Goodes says, 'I don't know
the truth, but I believe in the connection. Because I know that when
Aborigines play Australian Football with a clear mind and total focus,
we are born to play it' (Goodes 2008:185). Later, during an
appearance on The Marngrook footy show on the National Indigenous
Television (NITV) channel, aired 15 May 2008, Gillian Hibbins, the
AFL-endorsed historian, claimed that Goodes' understanding of
Australian Football and the place of Aboriginal peoples within the sport
was 'racist'; Hibbins (in Morrissey 2008) explained her
accusation, saying, 'If you define racism as believing a race is
superior in something, this is basically what he [Goodes] was
doing'. The disproportionately critical reaction of Hibbins, a
conservative non-Aboriginal historian, to the notion that Aboriginal
people believe the Australian game of football exists as an artefact of
their culture, confirms Goodes' status as a cultural warrior.

Concluding remarks

Goodes has effectively shifted the paradigm of debate about
Aboriginal people in Australian Football beyond the discourse of racism
and antiracism to new and more controversial discussions about the place
Aboriginal culture has in the game. Goodes' belief in the
marn-grook thesis, his self-assured stand against racism and willingness
to dance in celebration of cultural identity are highly significant
acknowledgments that he played the Australian game of football on the
Country of an Aboriginal nation, be it Cadigal, Wurundjeri or Noongar.
The negative public reaction to Goodes is not the result of his
personality but, rather, is based in his insistence that Aboriginal
culture be recognised and acknowledged as having a place in both the
national game and the Australian nation. Beyond the many unconvincing
excuses offered by his (overwhelmingly non-Aboriginal) critics, Goodes
became a controversial and unpopular figure in Australian Football
because he sought to remind the public that Aboriginal cultural
difference persists and, furthermore, has a right to persist as an
integral part of contemporary Australia. Goodes' advocacy of the
Aboriginal right to be different can therefore be seen in the context of
a general resurgence in Aboriginal political struggle within Australia,
a struggle that is increasingly turning its attention to the business of
Indigenous nation building through a grassroots movement of cultural
renewal and revival --a struggle that is also increasingly vocal in
pressing claims of Indigenous sovereignty to be recognised in Australia
as a prerequisite to treaty-making processes. In doing so, Goodes'
assertion of cultural difference on the football field extends far
beyond the battle for racial equality that characterised the experiences
of Aboriginal footballers in the twentieth century. Goodes'
struggle for the recognition of Aboriginal difference points to a
reframing of the national game and the nation in ways that require a
rethinking of Western political liberalism and echo those proposed by
thinkers as diverse as John Rawls, Will Kymlicka, Larissa Behrendt and
Noel Pearson (see Behrendt 2003; Kymlicka 1995; Pearson 2011; Rawls
1993). As the overwhelmingly negative reaction to Goodes in season 2015
suggests, the idea of a persistent and, indeed, resurgent presence of
the racial and cultural difference of Aboriginal peoples in Australia,
underpinned by ideas of sovereignty, Indigenous nationhood and the
possibility of treaty making, remains a concept that Anglo-Australia is
unwilling to admit.

In pointing out the difference represented by Aboriginal Australia,
Goodes reminded non-Aboriginal Australia that as First Nations peoples,
Aboriginal peoples possess a compelling right to cultural difference
that is based on the irrefutable historical fact that their occupation
of the continent pre-dates the contemporary Australian State by
thousands of years. In doing so, he reminded the overwhelmingly
non-Aboriginal public of these historical facts and in response they
booed and called for his deportation.

Australian Human Rights Commission 2015 '"Australia must
and can be better than this"--joint statement on racism directed at
Adam Goodes', 31 July, <www.humanrights.gov.au/news/stories/
australia-must-and-can-be-better-joint-statement-racism-directed-adam-goodes> accessed 28 January 2016.

Australian of the Year Awards 2014 'Adam Goodes --Australian
of the Year acceptance speech', 25 January, YouTube video,
<www.youtube.com/ watch?v=3EV-cLb_Ttg> accessed 30 January 2016.

--and Keir Reeves 2012 'Managing diversity: Reviewing Rule 30
and the implications of the racial vilification laws in the Australian
Football League since 1995', Journal of Australian Indigenous
Issues, Monash University, Churchill, Vic. 15(2): 14-22.

--and Keir Reeves 2012(a) The politics of participation: current
perspectives on Indigenous and multicultural sports studies, School of
Applied Media and Social Sciences, Monash University, Churchill, Vic.

Hallinan, Chris and Barry Judd 2009 'Race relations,
Indigenous Australia and the social impact of professional Australian
football', Sport in Society 12(9):1220-36.

Sharwood, A 2015, 'If you're angry about the Adam Goodes
Australian of the Year speech, you might like to check your facts',
The Herald Sun <http://
www.news.com.au/sport/afl/if-youre-angry-about-the-adam-goodes-australian-of-the-year-speech- you-might-like-to-check-your-facts/news-story/
f970cc32c5991121a75166f6219be1fe> accessed 14 April 2016.

Barry Judd is Professor of Indigenous Studies at RMIT University in
Melbourne. Barry is a descendent of the Pitjantjatjara people of
north-west South Australia, British immigrants and Afghan cameleers. He
is a leading Australian scholar on the subject of Aboriginal
participation in sports.

<barry.judd@rmit.edu.au>

Tim Butcher is Associate Professor of Management at Griffith
University in Brisbane. Tim is an organisational ethnographer Interested
In the organisation of space, place and belonging. He has been
researching with Aboriginal communities for the past five years.

<t.butcher@grif fith.edu.au>

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